Recover the secular ground

It would be intellectually satisfying if, in some ways, this book is regarded as a personal manifesto, a statement through the history of Partition and its aftermath, of the values which India’s Muslims should cherish, of the national priorities they should promote.” This is what I wrote in 1997 introducing Legacy of a Divided Nation: India’s Muslims since Independence. My conclusions were, then, based on the delineation of secular ideologies, the cross-communal networks in Indian society, and the social and cultural values shared by urban India’s Urdu-speaking elites.

Today, India stands partitioned — not territorially but in terms of the polarisation that has taken place across the board. The swing of the electoral fortunes may temporarily reverse this process, but that may not bring about the meeting of minds and the mending of hearts. After Gujarat, the second partition has occurred, exposing the weakness of secular goals and policies. Recovering the secular ground is, admittedly, a compelling necessity, but the turf, vandalised by the Sangh Parivar, is not, at present, easy to negotiate.

When the battlelines are drawn and the trishuls are out in the open, it is important to defend our secular institutions and not retreat from the battleground

When asked to revisit Legacy of a Divided Nation at a conference held a fortnight ago at the Oberlin College, USA, it was difficult to define, with the BJP and its allies occupying the commanding heights of power. I was at pains to explain that the task of the liberal Muslim was even harder in the aftermath of the carnage in Gujarat. By all means mouth secular slogans, write against fundamentalism, and exhort the Muslims to reform family laws. But, who is listening? Certainly, not the victims in Gujarat or the fear-stricken Muslims elsewhere. Sadly, in a highly polarised society, even the fuzzy liberal agenda appears to have been irretrievably lost.

Many professional historians underlined the presence of just three parties in colonial India — the British, the Congress and the Muslim League — and, consequently, focused on a triangular narrative. As a result, we lost sight of the rising tide of Hindu nationalism, a powerful force that was beginning to mould attitudes and influence public opinion from the last quarter of the 19th century. What is important is the emergence of this force, exemplified, for example, in the Arya Samaj movement, independently of colonial policies and the stridency of the political claims advanced by the Muslim organisations. Today, the power, strength and appeal of this force in Gujarat needs serious probing in the context of the evolution of the ideology of Hindu nationalism.

Rooted in the ideas and movements of late-19th century reformism and essentially designed to demonise the Muslim and Islam, Hindu nationalism released its own energy to capture the minds of its potential adherents in urban areas. Seemingly dormant owing to the Congress’ hegemonic presence, it surfaced in the 1940s to counter the Pakistan idea, an idea that the RSS, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Arya Samaj had itself cultivated by imaging the Muslims as the Other. With its cultural and religious baggage gifted by the Orientalist scholars, Hindu nationalism gained a fresh lease of life in the late 1880s, directing its anger, once again, against the minorities. The pogrom organised in Gujarat has, from the standpoint of its votaries, advanced the project pioneered by no other than the Gujarati-born Dayanand Saraswati. His book, Satyarth Prakash, is a classic exposition of the pungently divisive ideas that are now being articulated in Hindutva circles.

‘Legacy’, I repeat, was a personal manifesto of an individual born in free India, brought up in a liberal household where one read Ghalib rather than religious scriptures, heard Faiz, Majrooh and Firaq, and received lessons in history from leading Marxist historians like Irfan Habib and Athar Ali. Personally, I did not require a neat theoretical construct to put in place the working of different ideas and movements after Independence. To my generation it was abundantly clear that secularism was a typically Indian goal; hence, its legitimisation during the nationalist struggle and in the political processes thereafter.

It is true that the secular project suffered from certain ambiguities; equally, a secular constitution and state did not necessarily create a secular society. Yet, a secular blueprint offered by the Constitution mirrored, historically speaking, India’s trajectory during the colonial and post-colonial periods. In 1947, an alternative blueprint would have spelt disaster to the nascent Indian project.

Yes, we read Faiz and Firaq and revelled in the poetry of Sahir, Sardar Jafri and Kaifi Azmi. Today, many turn to Iqbal, the poet whose populism in the 1940s provided a grand ideology, a phantasmagoria in which some Muslims could find their image. Moved by the images from Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Gujarat, many read his poem Shikwa (Complaint to God), or Altaf Husain Hali’s The Ebb and Flow of Islam. Comparing the catastrophe in Gujarat with Hulagu’s invasion of Baghdad centuries ago, there is even talk of closing ranks, shunning ijtehad (interpretation), and following, both in letter and spirit, the Koranic injunctions.

Nursing such defeatist ideas will not do. Islam is not just a religion but a tremendous civilizational force; it will remain so despite the massacre of Palestinians, the plight of the Iraqis, and the trauma of Gujarati Muslims. Secularism, though assailed by the votaries of Hindutva, is not yet a defeated idea in civil society. It still commands, moreover, the allegiance of the non-BJP political classes. Let me also reiterate that a secular polity is the sole guarantor of our survival as a community and the nation. We have a stake in the secular project for a variety of reasons. One of them is that we don’t want children to be burnt alive, women to be gang-raped amidst cries of Jai Bajrangbali ki, and mosques and shrines to be destroyed and desecrated.

So, when the battlelines are already drawn and the trishuls are out in the open, it is important to defend our secular institutions and not retreat from the battleground. The fire of mutual hatred that is ablaze has to be extinguished by us. We know who lighted the fire, how it was lighted. The fire is blazing; it has to be put out. When that happens, we may not have to burn candles to mourn our dead, or bemoan the demise of secularism. Let me conclude with Gandhi’s message to the Muslims in 1921: “They must not be irritated by the acts of irresponsible or ignorant but fanatical Hindus. He who exercises restraint under provocation wins the battle”.

Let them know and feel sure that responsible Hindus are on their side in their trial for they are, as blood brothers, born of the same mother — Bharat Mata.

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